A Few Tips On How To Improve Your Webpage And Get Website Traffic

When search engines crawl the web, they are quite limited in interpreting the content that they find. We see web pages differently than search engines. Focusing on web pages and designing them so that they are structured for both search engines and human users is an important aspect of search engine optimization, and plays a key role in obtaining the much wanted web traffic.

The importance of indexable content and crawlable links

Getting listed in the search engine result page requires all important content to be in HTML text format. Despite advances in search engine technology and how web spiders interpret information, formats with non text content, such as images, Flash files and Java applications are often ignored. If you want to make sure that search engines see content destined for users and display it in the search results, you should add keywords and phrases in the HTML text on the page. When it comes to image formats such as jpg, gif or png, you can assign them alt attributes in HTML, essentially translating the information in the images to text that can be deciphered by the search engine.

You can also supplement search boxes with navigation and crawlable links. Content from Flash or Java plug-ins can also be supplemented with text. If video or audio content is meant to be indexed by search engines, it should be transcripted. Websites that have problems and errors with their indexable content can double check by using tools such as SEO-browser.com or MozBar.

Crawlable link structures are vital for search engines, as they allow them to see content. Structuring your navigation in a way that is not accessible to search engines will greatly impact how and if your pages will get listed in the search engine’s results pages, ultimately affecting the web trafficyour site gets. Crawlable structures will let web spiders browse all pathways of a website, allowing them easy access to your content pages.

The relation between keywords and search engines

Since the entire technology of information retrieval used by search engines such as Google rely on the use of keywords, understanding how to properly target the right keywords is critical. Keywords help search engines crawl and index content from millions of pages throughout the web. Instead of storing all web pages in one huge database, search engines use millions of smaller databases that are based on keywords. This gives search engines rapid access to data when a keyword is searched on the web. Keywords are the tools through which we interact with search engines, telling them of our intent and allowing them to retrieve and rank the pages that contain what we are asking for. By use of keywords, search engines are able to determine the relevanceof particular documents. In general, the more specific your keywordsare, the more likely you are to be ranked better, and obtain targeted website traffic.

Title tags, meta tags and URLs

Title elements of a page should accurately describe the page’s content. Title tags are the first things a user sees on the search result pages, therefore they play an important role in search engine optimization. Since search engines can display the first 75 characters at most from a title tag, and since that is also the limit for most social sites, it is recommended to keep the title within this limit. Keeping important keywords closer to the start of the title increases the chances of better page ranking, and makes it more likely that users will click on the link, thus enabling you to get traffic to your website.

Meta description tags describe in short a page’s content. Keywords contained in these tags are not used by search engines for ranking purposes, but are very important since they appear as the text beneath the title in the search result page. Although they have no limitation on the number of characters they can have, it is generally advised to stay within 160 characters, as longer meta tags are usually cut by search engines. Serving as advertisement copies, meta tags are very important in internet marketing. Having a readable, appealing description might increase the number of searchers willing to click on the link.

URLs should be made as short descriptions that summarize the content on your page. Although important to give users an idea of what the site is about, URLs should be kept reasonably short, so that they will be easy to copy and paste, and be fully visible in the search results. You should include the most important keywords in the URLs, although you should make sure you don’t overuse them, as you may be targeted by spam filters. Opting for static URLs is also a way to increase your overall ranking and indexing.

This small guide is intended for anyone wanting to improve or to create new search engine friendly sites. Following the few guidelines presented in this guide will help you get better rankings and positioning in search result pages and to get site traffic.

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